Eats Blog

Plenty of flash and sizzle at Dallas Chop House

Downtown’s glitzy new steak haven, Dallas Chop House, boasts prime cuts and prime real estate. The restaurant anchors the Main Street-St. Paul corner of the Comerica Bank building, and has a sleek glass lounge overlooking the new Main Street Garden.

DC (the nickname also shows up on the eatery’s steak-branding iron) is owned by Mike Hoque, the Bangladesh-born, Dubai-raised founder of Go Fish Ocean Club, Fish Express and Dallas Fish Market. He tapped cowboy chef Kenny Mills (who often cooks wearing his 5X beaver-felt hat) to head up DC’s kitchen.

“We’re a traditional steakhouse but with a few curveballs,” Mills told me, referring to dishes such as veal piccata sweetbreads and crawfish maque choux. As for the star attraction, Mills and consulting chef-partner Randy Morgan lined the meat cooler with blocks of Himalayan sea salt. “It pulls out some of the moisture and intensifies the flavor,” Mills explains. “The process adds saline to the air and helps cure the meat. I know of only two or three other restaurants in the country that do it.”